The Power of One (1992)

March 27, 1992

Review/Film;
A Youngster Against The Power of Apartheid

By JANET MASLIN

Published: March 27, 1992

John G. Avildsen directs the pious South African drama "The Power of One" as if it were "The Anti-Apartheid Kid," chronicling the brave attempts of a little blond, blue-eyed boy named P. K. to fight racial injustice. The battle is waged mostly in terms of toothless platitudes ("a waterfall begins with only one drop of water") and ugly encounters with racist bullies, encounters that Mr. Avildsen prefers shooting in close-up whenever possible. On the affirmative side, the boy's every triumph is accompanied by Johnny Clegg's soaring choral music (and Hans Zimmer's instrumental score).

P. K. (played by three actors of different ages, none of whom especially resemble the others) is introduced as a small, wise child during a shapeless preamble. Typically, this part of the film is edited so unemphatically that it appears to place equal emphasis on the little boy's bed-wetting and the death of his mother. It is half an hour before the excellent Morgan Freeman and Armin Mueller-Stahl enter P. K.'s story as an African prison inmate and the boy's kindly German grandfather, thus giving the film at least some reason to exist.

The grandfather, Doc, has been incarcerated by South African authorities for the duration of World War II, and P. K. follows him to prison. "Inside, everyone was concerned with just one thing -- the outcome of the inter-prison boxing championships," P. K. says in voice-over, thereby explaining the presence of Mr. Avildsen ("Rocky" I and V, "The Karate Kid" I, II and II) in these unfamiliar waters. When an older P. K. enrolls in high school (where the vastly overqualified John Gielgud has been cast as his headmaster), another boxing tournament lies in store.

The film's facile treatment of racial issues may be enough to bring back the practice of throwing tomatoes at the screen. Huge throngs of black extras (many played by members of the Masibemunye Bulawayo Choir, a large choral group that provides much of the stirring score) are often seen responding admiringly to the overtures of a lone white boy. At one point, the adolescent P. K. (Simon Fenton) even tries to conduct their musical efforts, though he demonstrably has no talent.

When the 18-year-old P. K. (Stephen Dorff) jogs through a black township, he is treated with similar reverence. The film's black characters are even said to believe P. K. has magical powers, thanks to the hints dropped by Mr. Freeman's Geel Piet, a bald, barefoot prisoner with a disconcertingly servile manner (he refers to P. K. as "Little Boss"). Mr. Freeman's humanity and intelligence are unmistakable, as always, but not even he can rise above the wretchedness of this role. When Geel Piet is forced to eat excrement by a white prison guard, the camera zeroes in for yet another close-up image of humiliation.

"The Power of One," with a screenplay by Robert Mark Kamen based on Bryce Courtenay's novel, must surely be less obvious on the page than it is on screen. The film is often regrettably blunt, as when the story's fascist Afrikaner villains literally drink a toast to apartheid, or when P. K.'s feeble Romeo-and-Juliet romance with the daughter (Fay Masterson) of this Afrikaner family is filmed as if it were "Romeo and Juliet," balcony and all. The film's occasional jarring elements, like the presence of what looks like a nuclear power plant near a black township in the late 1940's, are a welcome diversion.
The Power of One